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Christa Pike describes pain after botched execution

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Christa Pike says she’s in constant pain following her botched execution in Tennessee last month.

In her first public statements and surviving two doses of a lethal injection, the 50-year-old said, “My body hurts, my arms hurt, my hands hurt, my throat hurts. I still struggle to speak, and the pain isn’t just physical. There’s pain in my mind and in my soul.”

Pike also said she’s “deeply hurt by the incompetence” of those who failed to carry out her execution.

She was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike’s attorneys have urged the state’s governor to reduce her sentence to life in prison.

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